Download e-book for kindle: Acts of Creation: America's Finest Hand Craftsmen at Work by Walt Harrington

“This selection of profiles approximately nice American craftsmen is itself the handiwork of a good American craftsman.” --David Grogan, This previous apartment Magazine.

For Acts of production, award-winning journalist Walt Harrington travels the United States trying to find the paranormal nexus of craft, expertise, and mastery that provides beginning to a sensible paintings of art—and leaves its maker with a feeling of delight and fulfillment identified good to wonderful craftsmen around the ages.

A builder of huge fireplaces in Maine. a cupboard maker in Maryland. A millwright in Virginia. A locksmith and a home framer in Ohio. A hardwood flooring guy in Indiana. A blacksmith in Illinois. A stone carver in California. none of the fourteen craftsmen and lady profiled believes he's operating in basic terms to construct a home, to renovate a watermill, to solid a plaster medallion. every one imbues his paintings with grander purpose—Michael Seward wishes the folks who purchase his furnishings to adventure an emotional connection; Chuck Crispin wishes his consumers’ lives to be evoked in his flooring designs; Charles Keller desires the hugely informed global to understand the advanced genius of not just tremendous blacksmithing yet all advantageous craftsmen.

The profiles in Acts of construction support to reclaim where of workmanship in a consumerist period that areas larger price on revenue and branding than it does on committed excellence. those craftsmen supply not just classes approximately craftsmanship, but in addition approximately life.

“Acts of construction is a beautiful choice of literary journalism, written by way of a grasp of the shape. Walt Harrington’s gracefully nuanced prose, packed with feeling and finely saw aspect, splendidly conveys the area of craftsmen in all its crafty integrity. within the grand culture of Tracy Kidder, John McPhee and Joseph Mitchell, Harrington bargains us a desirable and enduring homage to males at work.” --Barry Siegel, Pulitzer Prize winner, director of the Literary Journalism software, college of California, Irvine

“Acts of construction is an instance of what occurs whilst a top-notch author, laboring in solitude with purity of objective, places the suitable phrases within the correct order.” --Madeleine Blais, Pulitzer Prize winner, writer of Uphill Walkers: Portrait of a Family

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